2024: Experiments for Change
On behalf of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Future of Human Rights Governance (FORGE) program at New York University School of Law, it’s our pleasure to share with you the list of selected experiments for change that will proceed into the FORGE 2024 experimentation process.
Ecological Emergencies
Intergenerational Knowledge Celebrating Care-Centered Societies
Project Team: Shawn Fleek, Manisha Desai, Elaine Webster, Mara Ntona, Michelle Lobo, Mauricio Salgado, Jeremy Perelman, Jonathan Rowson
Geography: Europe & North America
Summary: An intergenerational, cultural, and narrative intervention, the project team will facilitate a personal storytelling and community dialogue process for youth (18-30 years old, the youngest voting public) and elders (for whom the future has already arrived). Honoring diverse Indigenous knowledge systems and other diasporic communities with care-centered worldviews, the dialogues will explore wisdom and ways of being that ensure human and more-than-human beings sustainably coexist and thrive on planet Earth.
Technology
Citizen Participation for the Roll Out of Digital National ID in Jamaica
Project Team: Denique Soutar, Matthew McNaughton, Glen Henry (SlashRoots)
Geography: Caribbean
Summary: As Jamaica rolls out its national digital ID system, SlashRoots is seeking to shape the supporting ecosystem so that it is inclusive and rights-respecting. In 2024, SlashRoots will host a series of citizen participation opportunities including dialogues and knowledge-sharing with members of the public, civic groups, regional and international groups, policy-makers and implementers. Key to this process, SlashRoots will co-create accessible, co-designed, illustrative, plain-language design patterns, documentation of the key issues, proposals, policies, and implementation decisions. Learn more here.
Rising Inequalities
WATA Play & Educational Toolkit: Elevating African Stories & Knowledge in the International Human Rights & Ecological Justice Discourse
Project Team: Maïmouna Jallow
Geography: Africa & North America
Summary: WATA is a musical stage play and animated film accessible to schools, with an accompanying educational toolkit. The content explores various actions to clean & protect the environment. Through drama and humor, WATA places African history and culture centre-forward. The audience is invited to go on a journey filled with music, dance and heart-stopping costume and set design, and discover the stories of real-life women heroes who have often been erased from history books despite being instrumental in the fight for freedom and self-determination. To ensure the content is strongly informed by practitioners from the fields of human rights and environmental science, the FORGE program will support WATA’s dramaturgy process, including the development and peer review of the WATA script, and the accompanying educational materials.
Democratic Renewal
Human Rights of Human Resources (HRofHR): Workforce Interventions Toward Democratic Renewal in Lebanon
Project Team: Rouba El-Helou & Eugene Sensenig
Geography: Southwest Asia and North Africa
Summary: With many impasses for democratic renewal within formal governmental structures in the WANA region, the workplace provides an environment where cultural and political changes can be seeded. Based in Lebanon, the project team will develop workplace trainings linking together human resources development (HRD) and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), with a particular focus on cross-cultural coexistence and gender. Through their organizational partners, they will review, test, and introduce the trainings to multiple organizations across industries and sectors in Lebanon.
The FORGE 2024 experiment for change process will also be accompanied by the following projects:
Collaboratory by Laurel Fletcher at Berkeley School of Law (USA)
Africa Drive for Democracy Project by Deus Valentine Rweyemamu, Center for Strategic Litigation (Tanzania)
